1. Related Technical Fields
Related technical fields include route guidance devices, methods, and programs that provide guidance for a driving route that is suitable for a vehicle to drive from a departure point to a destination.
2. Related Art
Recent years have seen the emergence of the electric vehicle, in which a motor that is driven based on electric power supplied from a battery serves as the drive source, the hybrid vehicle in which both a motor and an engine serve the drive sources, and similar vehicles, in addition to the gasoline vehicle in which an engine serves as the drive source.
Further, in the known hybrid vehicle that is described above, a control schedule for the motor and the engine is generated with respect to a planned driving route.
In this case, it is an object of related art pertaining to generation of the control schedule, as described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. JP-A-2000-333305 (pages 4 to 6 and FIGS. 3 to 6), for example, to reduce the amount of fuel that is consumed over the entire route. Specifically, in the related art, a route from a departure point to a destination is searched, the planned driving route that is located is divided into a plurality of segments, and a control schedule is generated in which a segment in which the operating efficiency becomes good if the vehicle drives using the engine as the drive source is set as a segment in which the engine is used as the drive source for driving, and a segment in which the operating efficiency becomes poor if the vehicle drives using the engine as the drive source is set as a segment in which the motor is used as the drive source for driving.